UNITED NATIONS — After refusing for months to divulge its evidence against Iraq, the Bush administration unfurled an astonishing array of newly declassified intelligence Wednesday.
Like a prosecutor trying to persuade a skeptical jury with reams of circumstantial evidence, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell offered fresh accusations of Iraqi wrongdoing and fleshed out previous allegations with new detail. Powell charged that:
* Baghdad has moved weapons, hidden documents, replaced computer hard drives and even razed buildings and removed topsoil to deceive U.N. weapons inspectors. In all, Iraq has cleared nearly 30 suspected sites of incriminating material since last fall.
* Iraq's illegal procurement network around the world continues to seek toxins used in biological weapons, precursor chemicals for nerve and blister agents, special tubes and magnets needed to enrich uranium, and other prohibited materials.
* Hussein's regime built specially designed trailer trucks and railroad cars as clandestine mobile laboratories to develop and produce such germ warfare agents as anthrax and botulinum toxin. In all, Iraq has outfitted at least 18 large trucks as mobile production facilities.
* The Iraqi dictator has personally tried to prevent scientists from cooperating with U.N. inspectors. In December, he had scientists sign documents acknowledging that divulging sensitive information to inspectors is punishable by death. He also warned that any scientist who agreed to be interviewed outside Iraq -- as the U.N. Security Council has demanded -- would be treated as a spy.
* Baghdad harbors a terrorist network, including several Al Qaeda operatives who fled Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Chief among them is Abu Musab Zarqawi, an associate of Osama bin Laden with expertise in chemical and biological weapons.
* Iraq performed gruesome germ warfare experiments on 1,600 condemned prisoners in 1995. A witness saw prisoners tied down to beds while deadly experiments were performed on them.
Several former U.N. weapons inspectors said Powell's data showed that Iraq had developed and deployed far more sophisticated techniques to hide incriminating materials than Baghdad used between 1991 and 1998, when the first U.N. inspection system was in effect.
"We used to say we were one step behind the Iraqis," said Steven Black, who served six years as a U.N. inspector. "Now they're so far in front, we're not even in the same league."
